Shakespeare and the Novel
Seminar Leader: Daniel Pollack-Pelzner (Linfield College)
Shakespeare Association of America 2015
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
Walter Cohen (University of Michigan)
Much of Shakespearean drama originates in prose fiction, it is usefully compared to prose fiction
in its own time, and much of its impact in subsequent eras is on prose fiction. These claims are
best substantiated by adopting not an English or even a Western European perspective, but a
Eurasian and at times a global one. My focus will be on the first two of these three issues, with a
brief look at the third in conclusion. Half of Shakespeare’s plays are indebted to the novella
tradition, which goes back to Boccaccio. Behind him are Arabic and Sanskrit versions of the
frame-tale collection, rooted in ancient South Asian epic and oral narrative. A secondary
influence, directly on Shakespeare and indirectly on him through the novella, is the novel of late
Classical Antiquity. This literary background is central for the European novel, especially for
Cervantes. Similarly, South Asian oral narrative, transmitted in this case by the Buddhist
classics, plays an important role in the formation of East Asian drama and fiction alike. Because
of the Greco-Roman legacy, we tend to think of drama in relation to epic. But here Western
Europe is the outlier. In Early Modern Eurasia, drama characteristically is paired with prose
fiction—which is to say that it is tied to modernization. Thereafter, Shakespeare is a consistent
influence on prose fiction. One finds a heavy reliance on Shakespearean tragedy, in part to
dignify the emergent genre or its appropriation by groups newly bidding for canonical
status. The combination of Shakespeare and Cervantes in Tristram Shandy, moreover, though
unimportant in subsequent English literature, provides the model for the most important
alternative to realism in the late 18th and 19th centuries—in France, Germany, Russia, the U.S.,
Brazil, and perhaps the Netherlands and the Philippines as well.
Apostrophized Spirits: Elegy and Authorship in Sterne’s Sentimental Journey
Shilo McGiff (Cornell University)
In this paper, I discuss some of the formal consequences of a pastoral mode in the narrative prose
of Laurence Sterne. The argument is part of a larger project that addresses intersections of
pastoral and authorship in not only Sterne’s writing but also in the writing of William
Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf. In so doing, the larger project traces a line from classical
pastoral lyric to the novel, querying ways that the meta-theatrical drama of Shakespeare and the
narrative reflexivity of Sterne and Woolf have been conditioned by each author’s personal
investment in pastoral literatures.
Here, I read Sterne’s adoption of Yorick as authorial persona in Sentimental Journey as a
pastoral practice that both participates in a lyric tradition of prosopopoeia, and also situates this
adoption as part of a project of literary self-fashioning or authorial self-making native to pastoral
poetry. In choosing Shakespeare’s “Yorick” as a sign of this authorization, Sterne not only grafts
himself onto Shakespeare’s literary reputation but also explicitly recalls the site of poetic
mourning in Hamlet where Yorick makes his first appearance, thus engaging the structures of
pastoral elegy latent in both Shakespeare’s play and in Sterne’s novel. In Yorick’s impossible
status as both twice-dead and alive-again, Sentimental Journey stages a reversal of Shakespeare’s
famous memento mori; instead of the inescapable terminus of death and the inconsequence of
earthly life, Sterne’s narrative instead foregrounds the particularity of individual experience in
pursuit of sentimental commerce and produces a writer whose consolation may be found in an
afterlife given by self-penned literary fame.
Shakespeare in pieces: the anthology and the eighteenth-century novel
Kate Rumbold (University of Birmingham)
In the eighteenth-century novel, it can seem as if everybody talks Shakespeare. The playwright
is the most widely quoted of all authors, invoked by all kinds of fictional character in letters,
speeches and private conversations. This paper explores what it means, however, when even the
most confident and flamboyant speech-makers among them, from Samuel Richardson's Robert
Lovelace to Jane Austen's Henry Crawford, are revealed to get their Shakespeare second-hand,
retailing lines that have already been excerpted for them in popular quotation books such as
Bysshe's Art of English Poetry (1702) and William Dodd's Beauties of Shakespear (1752). To
analyse quotation as a function of character is something of a departure from existing criticism,
which has tended instead to debate the extent of the novelists' own dependence on, or
independence of, these intermediary literary sources, rather than to appreciate their critical and
creative engagement with the fragmentary ways in which Shakespeare was then circulating in
popular culture. What is the full extent of the relationship between the anthology and the
eighteenth-century novel? How far do their selections from Shakespeare overlap? What
different kinds of 'Shakespeare' -- from a stock of poetic 'beauties' to the moral advisor of
multiple fictional characters -- do the anthology and the novel respectively construct, even
through similar extracts? And crucially, in what ways do the anthology and the novel
collaborate in the construction of Shakespeare's cultural authority, and their own, with lasting
effect?
‘I do not pledge myself for the authenticity of this anecdote’:
Shakespeare and the Composition of The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
Adam Kitzes (University of North Dakota)
Throughout his Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Washington Irving made frequent use of
William Shakespeare as a figure in order to engage with numerous questions regarding literary
composition and history. Irving’s particular interest in Shakespeare is significantly more
complex than his public and critical reception has acknowledged. Publication records of the
nineteenth century suggest that readers gave prominence to his “Stratford upon Avon,” as they
elevated Irving to the status of exemplary literary tourist. But over the course of several essays,
Irving uses Shakespeare to illustrate the notion of literary history as a series of crucial problems
regarding the very readability of a text. In corresponding manner, the design of the Sketch-Book,
with its episodic and discontinuous approach to narrative development, represents a sustained
reevaluation of more contemporary literary traditions, which had used Shakespeare as the model
for their own respective approaches.
Forgetting the Capulets:
Naming Conventions and Recapitulations of Romeo and Juliet in Popular Culture
Bob Beshere (South University/High Point Campus)
Juliet’s famous inquiry to the night sky at the opening of Act 2 reveals much more than an
excited, adolescent girl’s infatuation. It also expresses specific concern for an epic feud, the
repercussions of which have tarnished two good families’ names in a noble Italian city. It does
not take much imaginative power to pretend she is speaking to us, the audience. She asks us to
remember them without their surnames, just as she begs Romeo to forget “Montague” and
“Capulet.” Unfortunately, the audience learns that this play has very little room for the love and
kinship that Juliet and her beloved wish to share. What follows is a “two hours’ traffic” of
mishearing, misunderstanding, and misnaming.
This model of two lovers coming so close to eternal bliss has been retold, remodeled, and
repackaged innumerous times in popular culture. Many of these retellings unabashedly borrow
Shakespeare’s model of this story (noting that Shakespeare himself borrowed the basic narrative
himself from earlier tales): Person from Group A wants to be with Person from Group B but
cannot because Group A and Group B are diametrically opposed to one another. “Person” and
“Group” vary wildly (even using vampires and werewolves as the respective groups), but the
model stands as one associated with good storytelling. We’re used to it. And we love it.
This paper will address these recapitulations of the Romeo and Juliet narrative in modern popular
culture, namely young adult literature. Furthermore, it will examine the degree to which these
retellings of the story include naming and nomenclature as both vital solutions to and problems
for the couple(s)’s situation(s). Ultimately, do these novels have the guts to end the narrative as
Shakespeare did? With the fated pair not only dying but also not getting to say good-bye? Romeo
dies from the poison before Juliet wakes up. This is a feature of the play often ignored even in
staged versions. This paper will address these questions and more to see just how close modern,
young adult novels get to Shakespeare’s own version.
Immortalizing Juliet, Demonizing Romeo: The Novels of Stacey Jay
Jennifer Flaherty (Georgia College and State University)
My seminar paper is part of a larger project that explores recent novels that target teenage girls
with Shakespeare appropriations, giving young adult readers an inside look into the behaviors
and motivations of characters such as Ophelia and Juliet. Stacey Jay’s Juliet Immortal and its
sequel, Romeo Redeemed, transform Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet into a paranormal
romance. In Jay’s version of the story, both Romeo and Juliet are offered immortality after their
tragic deaths if they join an eternal battle between the forces of light and darkness. They become
enemies, with Juliet working with the forces of light to save the lives of soulmates while Romeo
works for the forces of darkness to persuade soulmates to kill themselves or each other.
Jay’s novels appeal to the target audience of teenage girls, while simultaneously encouraging
them to look beyond their preconceived notions about the text. By liberating the character of
Juliet from her Shakespearean play and giving her a literary (and literal) afterlife, Jay attempts to
de-romanticize Romeo and Juliet’s star-crossed love and its tragic consequences, unraveling the
legacy of the play as the greatest love story ever told. Like other young adult novelizations of
Shakespeare, these books address critical problems of girlhood by establishing connections
between Shakespeare’s female characters and the coming-of-age issues that dominate
contemporary teen fiction.
‘I live dead that live to tell it now’:
Shakespeare, Novel(ty), and the Zombie in Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies
Johnathan H. Pope (Memorial University of Newfoundland/Grenfell Campus)
In his 2011 novel Warm Bodies, Isaac Marion adapts Romeo and Juliet as a love story set many
years after a zombie apocalypse has engulfed the world. A zombie, known only as R, falls in
love with a human survivor, Julie. R’s love affects significant change within him, fuelling his
transformation from a zombie back into a human, a transformation that is fully realized at the
conclusion of the narrative. I argue that Marion’s non-canonical approach to the zombie
functions as a meditation and commentary on adaptation and the status of the author in that
process. Unlike the traditional mindless zombie, Marion’s zombies are thinking, empathetic
creatures trapped within an inarticulate, fleshy cage whose compulsions must be obeyed or else
the zombie will die. In this sense, zombification and adaptation become analogous processes,
ensuring the author’s – in this case, Shakespeare’s – survival and contemporary urgency but
keeping him trapped in a prison over which he exerts little or no control. However, by applying
this approach to an unconventional and ‘happy ending’ version of Romeo and Juliet, the novel
posits an optimistic potential for adaptation during which the author can be revivified, an
optimism embodied by R as an analogue for both Romeo and Shakespeare.
Shakespearean Fiction as Biographical Supplement
Ken Jacobsen (Memorial University of Newfoundland/Grenfell Campus)
Despite the objections of purists, there is increasing scholarly recognition of the validity of both
fictionalized biography (sometimes disparagingly called ‘faction’) and ‘biofiction’ as forms of
life-writing. One potentially useful way to approach the nuanced relationship between biography
and biofiction is the notion of the supplement, defined in a double sense by Derrida as a “surplus,
a plenitude enriching another plenitude, the fullest measure of presence,” but also as
“[c]ompensatory”…and vicarious,…an adjunct, a subaltern instance which takes (the) place” (Of
Grammatology 144-145). All biographers, whether they acknowledge it or not, supplement hard
biographical ‘fact’ with fictional technique, while all writers of biofiction supplement fictional
narrative with biographical data. As a whole, Shakespearean biofiction may be viewed as
supplemental to biography in a double sense. On the one hand, it inevitably depends on academic
biography for its content, presenting itself as a benign attempt to bring the biographical subject
‘to life,’ completing the biographer’s work through gestures of complementarity. On the other
hand, biofiction functions as a critique of biographical scholarship, providing what biography
cannot by filling in lacunae and supplying concrete details and definitive ‘answers’ in a manner
forbidden to biographers, thus exposing biography’s limitations. Two recent novels about
Shakespeare amply illustrate this tension, though they adopt contrasting narrative strategies:
Robert Winder’s The Final Act of Mr. Shakespeare (2010) and Jude Morgan’s The Secret Life of
William Shakespeare (2012). Winder’s novel fills in the alleged gap of Shakespeare’s dramatic
output in 1613, supplying the full text of a ‘lost play’, “The True and Tragical History of Henry
VII,” written to counteract the Tudor propaganda of his earlier history plays, as well as its
abortive production history. In contrast, Morgan’s novel narrates the inner life of William and
Anne Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson, offering its readers an alternative perspective on ‘received’
biographical data rather than a catalogue of lost or suppressed incidents and texts.